SP-808 Groove Sampler

[BRIAN KEITH SOLOMON]

i just thought i would pass this on to anyone who owns a sp-808. the roland guys have come up with a way to take samples and loops from your pc or mac and put them onto the sp-808 zip disk through a regular zip drive. once you load the samples simply take the disk and insert it into the sp-808. it makes things alot simpler. just thought i'd pass that on....

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BRIAN KEITH SOLOMON

[Chuck]

Hey Brian, I just won a SP-808 on E-bay and I eagerly await it's arrival. What Pro's and Con's can you tell me about your's. Thanks Chuck

[BRIAN KEITH SOLOMON]

Hey Chuck, the sp-808 is a great piece of equipment. at $1600.00 or so dollars it's worth every penny. although it depends, well not depends but i guess there is a slight difference between the 808, and the 808 pro. can't really remember what the major differences are but for one you can hook up an external zip drive for more storage on the 808 pro. for more info on it go to the roland site the go through it very well. as for having it hooked up in my studio it's a god send specially with the vdrums it's like having another td-10. i can't say enough about the unit ,your a lucky person to have won one, it's going to bring you much happiness in days to come. if you have any more questions ask and i'll try to help you out.

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BRIAN KEITH SOLOMON

[Chuck]

Hey Brian, I'm still waiting for my SP-808 to arrive but I was wondering, are you using your's to trigger samples (with your V-drums)? Have you tried to update the OS to the new E-Mix format? I own a 100mb internal zip drive. With the new program can I take any sound file, edit it (like with sound forge) then drag and drop it onto my zip? Did you have to do anything special to get that program to work? Thank's in advance...Chuck

[BINARY]

Hey, Brian

I did some investigation of the SP-808 a while back and was told a few things that I'm not sure are true. I figure you're the person to ask...

The guy at the store told me that the samples are loaded partially into RAM as sort of a buffer, but ultimately read from the zip disk when they're called upon.
Is that the way it works, and if so, is that a stable situation? In my experience, zip disks are fairly unstable as a rule, and I'd be nervous trusting a live performance with them.
It makes no sense to me that Roland would make them that way, so I'm thinking that I'm wrong.
I guess the way to tell would be if you can load a sample and set it off with the zip disk out.

Also, doesn't the groove sampler come with a zip drive installed? That's the way it was at the store, it was in the back. That said, I thought that what you mention in your first message was always the way it worked, is that not true?

Is it also a sequencer?
Meaning can you arrange the samples that you have into a song structure or a phrase?

Lastly (and this may sound reeeaaaly dumb), but what does the groove sampler DO?

Noone at the store could show me exactly how to use the thing, as all I was looking for was a sampler at the time. The Groove Sampler seemed to make some cool beeps and buzzes for internal sounds, but I never really understood how it worked.
I guess what I mean is that since all I wanted was a sampler, it seemed to do more than I needed.

I went to the Roland site for answers, but the website was thin on info.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the long-winded message.

BINARY

[This message has been edited by BINARY (edited January 09, 2001).]